Anne Enright was a Man Booker Prize winner for "The Gathering." I enjoyed this novel even more. Enright is a soulful writer, who notices all the vagaries of everyday life. She is masterful at getting at the soul of Irish families and presenting the dynamics of their relationships in subtle ways. The beautiful Green Road is a country road which runs through the town of Ardeevin in County Clare. It leads to the sea and winds its way through the story until the end of the book.
In Part 1 of the book we meet the Madigan Family. It is Palm Sunday in 1980 and we are going to follow this family for 25 years. Enright devotes a chapter to each of the family members. It begins with the youngest, Hanna, being sent to the chemist to pick up medicine for her mother, Rosaleen, a drama queen who is always taking to her bed, when things don't go her way. Her children refer to this as "the horizontal solution." Dan the oldest boy and Rosaleen's favorite announces at dinner that he is going into the priesthood. Rosaleen immediately takes to her bed in a fit of the vapors, and so it begins.
Well, Dan never does become a priest and the next time we meet him it is 1991 and he has moved to New York City and it becomes apparent that he is a popular member of the gay community in Lower Manhattan. Enright gives a poignant picture of the devastating effect of the AIDS epidemic on his friends.
Emmet, the younger Madigan son, is an aid worker in Mali. In 2002 we see him living with his current girlfriend, working among the poor. By 2005, Emmit is back in Dublin, living with a Dutch woman, seemingly unable to commit to any kind of relationship.
In Part 2, it is the Christmas season in 2005 and Rosaleen, now a widow, is 76 and feeling her age. She is having trouble concentrating on her Christmas card writing. She has decided to sell the house which prompts the children to return for a final reunion in the house. In this part of the book we follow Connie, the oldest daughter, who is married to a successful contractor and is busy being a modern mother and burdened with the care of Rosaleen, whom she hasn't been able to separate from in the way the other children had. Before she married she took one trip to New York to see Dan, hoping she might find a new life there. When things didn't work out in the city she declared, "This is the place you went to get a whole new life, and all she got was a couple of Eileen Fisher cardigans in lilac and grey."
By this time, Hanna, a 37 year old failed actress, is living in Dublin with the father of her child and is a caustic alcoholic.
Each chapter could be a short story, yet they are all connected and the climax of the novel takes place on Christmas Day as the family is gathered together, clearly a damaged and dysfunctional lot. Rosaleen is as manipulative as ever and it is this manipulation which binds these very different sibling together.
This is a beautifully written novel, by a talented master writer. Enright's timing is perfect when it comes to breaking up the unhappiness of the characters with a light comic touch I highly recommend it to all readers.
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